For the first week of Emory’s life he slept in the crib in his bedroom. It’s a nice crib. We purchased an expensive organic mattress and some breathable bumpers to go with it. I put him down at night, turned on the baby monitor, and we’d settle in as well.

And then something happened. And that something is called the Pack ‘N Play.

A week after we brought Emory home, my mother had the awesome idea of putting together the Pack ‘N Play so we could have an uninterrupted meal with Emory nearby. TobyJoe put it together, including the top bassinet for smaller creatures. That was the end of Emory sleeping in his crib.

Emory has been sleeping in the Pack ‘N Play ever since, a wheeled piece of furniture we like to call “The Baby Mobile”. And for 11 weeks it has been stationed not inches away from my head at night. (The picture below was taken right after he was born.)

I never let him spend too much time in The Baby Mobile during the day because I have this theory (based on no scientific evidence whatsoever) that if I save sleep routines for sleep, my baby will “get it” whenever it comes time to do just that. For example, we never swaddled him unless he was going to bed at night. And we never put him in The Baby Mobile for very long during the day.

Emory weighed 12 pounds, 3 ounces at his last pediatric appointment. It was at that point I realized that we were running out of time. You see, The Baby Mobile’s top bassinet feature has a cap of 15 pounds. And at the rate Emory’s growing, I know we are quickly approaching the day he’ll outgrow the bassinet. So we decided to make the transition now. What I didn’t know was how hard it was going to be for me to let him go.

On Monday night Emory returned to his crib. Which means I no longer get to listen to his farts live. Instead, they are broadcast over a small speaker that dangles next to my head. And that’s so sad, amplified farts. No one should have to live this way.

He’s been OK about it. I usually have to rock him to sleep. (That happened only rarely before.) And putting him down doesn’t usually take the first time. And he doesn’t yet sleep through the night. (He was closer to doing that whenever he slept in The Baby Mobile. I think I threw him off with this whole crib switch.) But I can deal with that. I’m OK with getting up at night. The thing is, ever since he moved out of The Baby Mobile and into the crib I’ve been having pretty horrible nightmares. And I wake up in a cold sweat. If you’d call it “waking up” at all because I’m convinced I never actually fall to sleep anymore, which is probably why I now remember all of my dreams and nightmares.

But my question isn’t about the nightmares or how to make him sleep through the night. My question is if I’m suffering from separation anxiety and he’s only in the next room how the hell am I going to deal with being away from him for a whole 24-hours when we attend The Barbarian Group Christmas party in Boston this year and he stays with my mother? And what will happen whenever he goes off to preschool or kindergarten? And, oh my god, college? This is why people have more kids, isn’t it.

What am I going to do when he grows up?

TobyJoe and I have done some stupid things in our time. We picked up and moved to San Francisco (a place neither one of us had ever been before) for a job that ended up sucking. There was the time we played pool for 9 hours and drank at least a 12-pack of beer apiece. The next morning was the stupidest part of all. (Thank God those days are behind us.) We both signed up to run the NYC Marathon 6 months before the actual event without having much of a foundation at all. My right knee still hasn’t healed entirely and his running career came to an end because of it. We’ve made some dumb decisions over the years.

But the dumbest thing we’ve ever done happened when we bought this dangling gymnasium-like toy for Emory.

We may as well have taken pieces of string tied with tuna and hung them over the baby.

Emory barely gets to use it unless we lock Murray in the back room.

But that’s OK, because Emory recently found his toes! And who needs a colorful, portable gymnasium when you have your own two feet?

If you’ve been reading this Web site for a while you probably already know that I don’t hold too much back. I will write about almost anything personal, the more self-depricating the better. I like to admit to the ridiculous and embarrassing things I did as a kid, like this. I even posted a story I wrote as a kid, a story filled with atrocious grammar and spelling. (Nothing’s really changed there, am I right?)

Why is this important? Because when it comes to the pictures I have featured today, I am truly embarrassed for myself. And because I’m so embarrassed by them, I decided that this was going to be my biggest test yet. And so I have asked myself, “Can you post some of your most embarrassing photographs, Michele? Can you?”

Yes, Michele. Yes, you can.

THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL YEARS

(Descriptions, if any, are above each picture.)

I think I looked pretty cute at age 6.

And then things went down hill. At least with the hair.

Here is a comparison of 1980 to 1981 and then 1981 to 1982.

This was taken during my stint as a kid model for NASCAR.

This was taken at the peak of my Xanadu obsession.

Right before I had that overbite fixed. I swear, my parents are not related.

MIDDLE SCHOOL

I’m the second girl in from the right, second row. Just kidding. She’s much prettier.

This was taken in Raleigh. You can probably tell because of the frizz.

Poor Nina, competing with my hair.

HIGH SCHOOL

I am not sure what to say about these.

A big WTF to my eyebrows and me for sure. But I think the photographer deserves a WTF as well. I mean, who am I? Elizabeth Taylor? No, you don’t need glasses.

AND THE WINNER IS…

This is my most embarrassing picture ever. It was taken when I was 13-years-old. I used to take dance. I was a terrible dancer already and then they had to go and do this. TobyJoe saw this picture and said to my mother, “Well, Diane, you’re only getting one grandkid from us.”

Let’s hope I’m like fine wine because wow.

Someone once stated, in regards to new mothers and their daily routines, “I don’t understand what all the bitching is about. Just put the baby on the couch next to you – in a seat, whatever – and go about your business. How hard can that be?” I was pregnant at the time. And I remember thinking I was about to find out.

I broke up with all of my remaining clients this week. I have been trying to make the mother thing and the work thing coincide since Emory was born. And for a week or two at the very beginning I thought it might just work. But then everything started to change. Emory began demanding more from me as he grew older. And that made juggling work and paying attention to the baby really difficult. But the even harder part, and its not what I would have guessed prior to having a baby, is that it’s even harder to work now that Emory is paying attention to me.

I’m not sure if it’s the guilty catholic thing I have ingrained inside of me or if it’s just the simple fact that ignoring someone who longs for my attention while I stare at a computer (or TV) screen seems irresponsible and depressing. But I just can’t bring myself to prop the kid up on the couch next to me, grab some lunch, and stare straight ahead at a glowing screen while he stares longingly at the side of my head. Which is why it can take 3 hours spread across a few days to watch a half-hour TV show in this house. Granted, even the potential TV and/or computer staring scenario doesn’t come around all that often. Time is usually spent feeding, bottle washing, adult dish washing, catching up on laundry, baby changing, hanging up clothes, feeding myself, pumping breast-milk, washing myself, paying the bills, and general tidying. Basically, there are a whole bunch of other things that must be taken care of before watching TV or working. The good thing about most of those things is I can talk (or sing) to him while I do them. Chores don’t take much attention. TV and design work does. So, I don’t feel badly doing chores while Emory stares at me and I tell him stories or sing him songs.

About two weeks ago, as the pieces of my work life began to fall to the floor around me, I realized that the whole working while mothering scenario simply was not going to work for me. I had to make a move. I had to break up with my clients. “It’s not you, it’s me.” And, “I just don’t have the time to be in a committed relationship right now.” weren’t just clichés. They were entirely true.

There’s a misconception that being a stay-at-home mom is some easy thing people do and that it’s not really work at all. I thought this way at one point in my life as well. I mean, how hard can it be, right?

It is hard, people. Moms have tough jobs. Not only are we juggling chores so the house doesn’t end up in shambles, but we’re also taking care of a really [insert any adjective] baby. My baby happens to desire constant amusement. If it’s not amusement on his mind, it’s food. And what’s more? He doesn’t speak english yet. So, sometimes “AHGOOOO!” means, “FEED ME!” And sometimes a “AHGOOOO!” means, “Dance for me, woman, DANCE!” I just never know.

So, no, it’s not possible to just put the baby on the couch next to you and go about your day as you once had. It’s far from possible, which is why I am going to do this full time until further notice. We may end up monetarily poorer as a family but Emory will be a lot richer as a baby.

^{Hat knitted by Nora. Yay, Nora!}

I know you’re not supposed to start a baby on solids until he or she is 6 months old for a plethora of reasons, but what if the baby stares at you longingly whenever you eat food? And then proceeds to stick his fist down his throat? And what if he rarely seems full no matter how much milk you feed him during the day? Emory is a big boy (as in tall, he’s not overweight). I’m not sure I’m going to be able to wait 6 months to feed him solid food.

Sometimes I think it’s possible to read too much, do too much research. The other day I was peeling apples to make a hot apple crisp for TobyJoe and me. Emory watched me the entire time. After I finished, I decided to let him lick my fingers which were covered in apple goodness. He loved it. At first he made a face as if to say, “This is REALLY weird!” And then he wanted more.

I guess we’ll wait a little longer and see what happens.

When Lisa first wrote to me about Murray, she said, “You have to meet this guy. I am holding him for you. You need to laugh.” The last bit was in response to our having just put our most beloved 14-year-old cat to sleep. An experience that would have sent me over the edge had I not been pregnant with Emory. I used to suggest that putting a pet to sleep while 6 months pregnant was just really bad luck. But I’m starting to believe that since it had to happen, it was sort of better that way because I had something positive to focus on. Regardless of its timing, the experience nearly knocked me to the ground. Lisa was right; I did need to laugh.

Hours after bringing Murray into our home I was in tears. And not the tears I had grown used to dealing with the weeks leading up to Murray’s arrival. I cried from laughing so hard. I have known hundreds of cats over the years, and not one of them has ever made me laugh as hard and as frequently as Murray.

Schmitty died on April 21st of this year. And only recently have I been able to talk about him without crying. Now I smile. There are still difficult moments. I think about him and my chest starts to hurt, like, my heart actually begins to ache. It starts from deep within, bubbles up to the surface gaining more power and force as it gets closer to the top and then it takes my breath away. Breathing and all the other bodily functions that usually happen involuntarily become obvious and therefore very difficult. Sometimes the heartache comes on so quickly it forces an audible sound from my throat. I guttural sound, like being kicked in the stomach, vomiting air, a sorrowful dry heave. I imagine it’s the way a window fan feels whenever the air outside moves through it faster than its blades can spin. I still wake up feeling that way sometimes when I realize I’ll never see Katrina again, my grandmother, and yes, Schmitty.

But now we have Murray. And while he will never, ever replace The Big Guy, he is always there to make me laugh. For example, that last paragraph took over 30 minutes to write because Murray jumped on my lap midway through and would not leave me be. Murray doesn’t like it when I’m sad. I swear. He knew I was writing about something sad.

Sometimes I think he works overtime at making me happy. And of course I had to take screen caps of this.

And so last night I finally had a talk with him about it. I told him he didn’t have to keep up all the clowning around, that TobyJoe and I feel better and that he could finally relax. I told him that I know that people and cats can’t be funny all of the time. I told him that he could ignore us if he wanted to, that he got the job. He’s here to stay. I told him that he could take a vacation from all the silliness.

And instead of taking some time off, in the middle of our talk, he climbed into the kitchen sink just as I finished the dishes and tried to bite the water. Murray may never replace Schmitty, but he fills a vacancy in my heart that needed a tenant.

This is why everyone who made fun of us for buying an organic crib mattress can go ahead and bite me. Seriously, we were laughed at for buying chemical-free baby clothing, blankets and a mattress. We were also scoffed at for wanting to use glass bottles not only by people we know but by some of the folks in our parenthood preparation classes.

This is NOT the type of article I want to see in my RSS feed. Some really scary stuff, people. And you’re insane to not let it bother you.

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“[Rowan’s] been on this planet for 18 months, and he’s loaded with a chemical I’ve never heard of,” Holland, 37, said. “He had two to three times the level of flame retardants in his body that’s been known to cause thyroid dysfunction in lab rats.”

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Granted, our couches are filled with chemicals. Our cheap Ikea carpets are as well. And the Pack ‘n Play isn’t exactly retardant-free either.

I was watching Ellen the other day (Shut up. I like her.). Her guests were Jon & Kate and their 8 biological children. The word “biological” matters this time because that added to the insanity of their story; you should have see how large this woman was at month 6 and how much bed rest she had. Anyway, I was sort of blown away by this couple. The wife had perfect hair, makeup. Her clothing was ironed. She looked awesome and totally awake, totally peppy, vibrant.

Emory is a great baby. He doesn’t cry. He barely fusses and whenever he does fuss it’s more funny than frustrating. Yet I still find ways to complain. I still feel a bit lost when it comes to this mothering thing. My hair is rarely washed. The house is in disarray. I barely have time to feed myself and the meals I do consume must be of the one-hand held variety. I juggle between the same three pair of pants and the same 5 shirts. The dishes pile up sometimes. The cat box overflows. The floors have tumbleweeds. I have just one baby. Just one, awesome, well-behaved baby and I still can’t keep up with the upkeep. And my hygiene was the first thing to go. It’s everything baby first. Then cats. Then house. Then Internet. Then me.

How the hell does this woman take care of 8 kids and keep things even remotely orderly at all? Jon heads to work and she takes care of 8 kids. Eight. She appears to have a 100-dollar haircut. Plus, her fingernails are clean. Plus, she probably doesn’t smell and I bet she still shaves. And if that wasn’t shocking enough. She makes dinner every night from scratch. What’s more? IT’S ALL ORGANIC. How does she find the time to cook from scratch for 8 kids? But the bigger question is how the hell can they afford it? TobyJoe and I have trouble paying for the three of us to eat all organic. But ten?

Having never seen the show, maybe they’re messier than they interview?

Either way, I want my own a reality TV show. The one where they reveal how hairy my armpits and legs must get before I decide it’s time to shave them. Or how much baby spit up has to acquire on each shoulder before I retire that shirt. I want a reality TV show to enter my home and record the fact that we continue to sleep on the bed sheets even after the baby pees on them. I want a reality TV show to capture moments like the time an entire bottle of (organic!) formula spilled on the bedspread and my leg at 5 AM and I wasn’t sure if it was pee or not and decided to get a slumbering Toby’s opinion and figured a simple yet direct, “SMELL THE PANT LEG. COME ON! SMELL THE PANT LEG.” would suffice. They’d be amazed at what I’ve ingested in 30 seconds. They’d be amazed at how quickly I can be in and out of the bathroom. They’d be amazed where pee pee diapers end up around house before they’re finally tossed. Because the reality for me is taking care of one child takes time and a whole lot of energy. Gimme 8 kids and the ACS would be at my door in no time.

It’s a good thing there are shows like Friday Night Lights. While it may be fiction, the inside of Tami Taylor’s house, is a whole hell of a lot closer to reality when it comes to how our apartment looks.

Perhaps if I spent less time in front of the TV I’d have more time to cook organic meals for my family. Point taken, Conscience.

On Friday afternoon TobyJoe got a phone call from our ISP (internet service provider). The caller works in the “sensitive material” department and called to inform TobyJoe that they had received a phone call from an international crime agency stating that one of the photos on mihow.com was being used on a Web site for pedophiles operating out of the Netherlands. In typical Michele fashion, I completely freaked out. I told Toby to take the site down immediately. And in typical TobyJoe fashion he calmed me down telling me not to do anything too irrational and let him take care of it. I then suggested he remove every single photograph from mihow.com, even the ones of trees, empty bar stools, scones and cats. But he reminded me that if we were to do that, my Web site would look like crap. I’ve been taking pictures for 6 years. Letting it be overrun by a bunch of red Xes is not the most appealing option.

Late Friday I put up a graphic on Flickr letting people know that something was wrong. I didn’t really give any details and I’m regretting that now. Because the email I received in response have been filled with some pretty creative assumptions. No, we are not being stalked by an actual person. No, I am not in any physical danger. It’s creepy stuff, but we’re not in any harm. It’s just very disturbing, receiving a phone call like that. I’m sorry I wasn’t more specific. I didn’t want to cook up any Internet drama so I tried to keep it simple. In doing so, I think I created more. And I am sorry about that.

TobyJoe and I have discussed this. For now, we’ve turned off hotlinking, which means people can no longer link directly to my images making it harder for people to feature them on messageboards (which happens all the time but never for something this disturbing) and on personal Web sites. That fix works for now. It doesn’t stop people from taking screen caps of each image and hosting it themselves, but it works for the time being.

We also discussed password protecting this Web site. I’m not sure I want to do that. I have my reasons for keeping it public but I won’t go into it here. (Perhaps I will in the comments section.)

TobyJoe spent Friday night digging through our logs to find out when the picture had been linked. The photo went up on that board on September 20th, 2007. (As an aside, the crime agency really is doing its job. It didn’t take them long to let our ISP know about it. One must wonder what they’re cooking up. Either way, I feel a little better knowing they’re out there.) It took us a while because the image was a bit older but we found it and promptly removed it. It has been replaced with a great big “F*CK YOU, PERVERTS. YOU’RE SO PATHETIC.” (Not that the messageboard will see it since hotlinking is disabled, but if they visit google again and search for a specific string that’s what they’ll see now. And let me tell you, that image turned up for all sorts of sick search variations. I am disgusted with Google. For example, say you have a picture of your dinner with the caption “Nice Roast Beef”. A person may find your image by searching “Naked Rape Beef” not that I know what that means. Basically, you don’t even have to have the word “rape” on that page and Google will find it because, hell, it’s close enough!)

So we ordered a pizza pie and ran a couple of Ruby scripts and we extracted every single IP address (all 585 of them) that hit that particular messageboard thread. And for about 30 seconds today, I posted each and every one of them here. And then we realized that in doing so we were potentially putting ourselves at an even greater risk especially since said pedo board is important enough to be watched by an international crime organization. And the last thing I want to do is piss off a bunch of pedophiles. So, I took all the IPs down. (I have half a mind to send the unedited version of this post to NBC. They seem to enjoy outing pedophiles. We have no idea what to do with all these IPs if anything at all. And some of them are from the U.S. Remember, this is a private messageboard run by pedophiles for pedophiles. If someone’s a member, that someone is the real deal. They’re not just there for the “articles”.)

From now on many of my Flickr pictures are going to be marked as “For Friends and Family.” If you want to see the photos, please let me know. If I know you personally or trust you because I’ve seen you around these parts enough, then I’d be happy to add you to my contact list. It sucks that it has to be this way but I’m not willing to take the risk especially since I/we can’t control hotlinking over there.

And in regard to mihow.com? I’m still not sure about its future. I feel a little less insane about the whole thing today but I’m still not sure the blog is worth it and posting pictures of anyone scares me. I’m responsible for another life, a life I would give my own for. Do I kill the blog? Do I only write? Do I turn it into something else entirely? Do I sell the domain to the highest bidder? (heh) Do I take a break and figure it out? Or do I just realize that this is the way the world works and hope the US government (and NBC) is taking care of us at least with regard to online predators.

I guess this is an explanation as to why I acted the way I did on Friday. It’s also an obvious reminder to those who post photographs of children and believe they are being viewed innocently online. In the wrong hands, the pictures of your children may be used as fodder for something dark and disgusting. And at the rate things are going, the only people who’re going to feel safe online in a few years are going to be the pedophiles, a couple of MySpace users, and the Kool-Aid drinking, tinfoil hat wearing religious zealots.

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Update: Tuesdays with Murray will be back next week!

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First of all, I want to apologize for my post from yesterday. I was worked up about Emory’s appointment and wrote it flippantly as we were walking out the door. I wasn’t feeling very well at the time.

The appointment went alright. The doctor weighed and measured him first. He weighs a cool 12 pounds 3 ounces and is 24 inches long. He’s pretty tall for his age, or long, or whatever term is proper. We asked our questions, which usually all end with, “Is this normal?” And then it came time for his vaccination(s). I should probably mention that Emory does not cry. It used to worry me but then I read that some babies don’t cry and that it’s perfectly normal. (My younger brother was one of those babies.) Emory gets cranky every now and again, but he never cries. In the 9 weeks he’s been with us, he has cried 3 times. That’s it. Three. So yesterday when he got his first ever shot and began screaming it was a little shocking for the both of us. Toby was holding him at the time and I thought he was going to break down as well. I did. Emory cried so hard all sound stopped, like, he actually stopped breathing. It was a terrible thing to watch. I’m just not used to seeing the little guy cry. Even after the crying stopped, his bottom lip stuck out in a sad-faced pucker. Brutal. Truly brutal. Not sure how parents do this, quite honestly.

But that’s enough about that. I hate remembering it.

He smiles at us all the time, which makes every inch of my day. He’s talking a lot now as well. One of my favorite sounds is when he gets really worked up and lets out a gleeful squeal. Those are awesome.

He sleeps from 11 PM until about 4 AM. (Unless he’s stressed out and/or gassy, then he’ll wake up earlier but that only happens every now and again at this point.) We feed him at 4 AM and OH MY GOD is he ever hungry. You’ve never seen a hungrier baby and we tease him about it. “Oh, Emory is starving to death. Emory is dying from hunger. Emory has never eaten before. Poor Emory.” And when you get that bottle within an inch of his mouth, all hell breaks lose. His arms flail. His head shakes from side to side and fast! (A technique we were told is called “The Barracuda” and have since turned into a verb. “Is he barracuda-ing?”) His eyes get really big and both of his fists go directly into the black hole he’s discovered at the bottom of his head, right between the fleshy things that those two pale monkeys are always kissing. At 4 AM, he is one hungry baby and I love it. I love to wait a second before putting that bottle in his mouth because it’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.

Toby feeds him at 4 AM and I usually go and pump. I get the most milk in the middle of the night. I’m not sure why. I have read that it has something to do with late night hormone levels. I still don’t get much compared to most of the women on the EP board I am a member of. Most women get anywhere from 6 to 10 ounces every time they pump. I get 3 tops and five at 4 AM. I never have any left over at the end of the day but it works. He’s getting breast milk still and I’m really pleased with his growth. I was going to stop pumping at 3 months but at this point, I think I’ll see it to 6 months of age. We’ll see.

After he eats at 4 he’ll go to sleep again until about 7:30 or 8. He’s such a good baby.

We took him on his first trip last weekend. We drove to State College, Pennsylvania to visit my parents and get some much needed fresh air. He did great. We stopped a lot to let him stretch and we hit a bunch of weekend traffic as well, so the 4 hour trip ended up being more like 6. But he did wonderfully. And me? The moment I stepped out of that car in PA I felt lighter. I felt really really good. My anxiety dropped to undetectable levels. I felt secure, safe. I know that I will miss New York someday and I know that Emory will probably give us hell for moving away from here, but I know that I need an easier lifestyle at this point in my life. It won’t come as any surprise to anyone reading this that our time left living (not working) here is limited. We’re not sure where we’re going just yet, but we are going. But we won’t rush it. This time, we’ll plan better.

What else. He’s outgrown most of the 0 – 3 months outfits and is entering the 3 – 6 month size range, which is awkward because he’s only 2 months old. The cliché is very true. They sure do grow up fast. What are we going to do with all that clothing? Someone we know needs to have a baby boy soon. (Hint. Hint.)

He eats roughly 4 ounces three times a day and then nurses the rest of the time. I’m guessing he gets anywhere from 22 to 26 ounces a day unless there’s a growth spurt, then he’ll shoot up to 30 ounces. One day, I swear he ate nonstop. I just kept feeding him and feeding him. There was a record sized dump at the end of that one. Growth spurts are brutal.

Every day being a mom gets a little bit easier. I’m starting to figure this out albeit slowly. I’m starting to get the hang of it. Of course, it helps that he now recognizes me. And waking up to that great big smile? Well, I can’t say I really knew what joy was until the day that happened.

Emory turned 9 weeks old today (or two months old on Monday).

He has his two month doctor’s visit today as well. He’s scheduled to have (at least) two vaccinations. But I think we’re going to spread them out. That said, he’ll probably only receive the Pneumococcal today. I think I need to spend a little more time reading about the DTaP. We’re going to give him DTaP, but I need the doctor to answer a few things first. For example, the sanofi pasteur version may contain trace amounts of mercury whereas GlaxoSmithKline does not. I want to make sure our pediatrician has the latter. If they do not, I will order it and pay out of pocket if I need to. We’re armed with questions.

I was looking back at my baby book today to see what vaccines I was given as a baby and when. I received DTaP, polio, and the MMR. That’s it. Three different shots for 7 different illnesses. Now? There are so many more now. Most of them I hadn’t ever heard of before having Emory. (Pneumococcal, for example. Which, contrary to popular belief, has nothing to do with pneumonia [WRONG it does. It protects an infant from getting it] and instead protects an infant from a bunch of different strands of bacteria.)

As I see it one of two things could have happened. (I am admittedly about to tread into an area I know little about but I’m a mother so allow me the speculation.)

1). The added vaccines were created for illnesses/diseases that always existed in which case parents should be given a choice.

2). The added vaccines were created to keep up with illnesses/diseases that changed or grew out of cultural change, population growth, etc., or already existing (morphing) diseases. I mentioned before that I received my MMR (along with a number of boosters) and ended up with the measles two years ago. Does that mean the viruses are changing and the vaccines we once received can no longer combat them? Does that mean adults should continue getting vaccinated as well? And, if that’s the case (which it obviously is as I was vaccinated and it’s no longer valid) don’t we put our children at risk as much as the kid at school whose parents refused the vaccine? How many of you have any idea of your MMR is still valid? The only reason I know is I had a serious amount of blood work run when I wanted to get pregnant. Who’s to say that your elementary school janitor or your babysitter still has a “working” MMR vaccine? Who’s to say your daughter’s vaccine still “works”? Does anyone know what I’m saying? Am I making sense at all? Testing 123 is this thing on?

It’s scary out there, people. And you haven’t heard the end of it from me. I don’t care how many nasty email or comments I receive. YOU WILL NOT SILENCE ME, INTERNET!

We just got back from Pennsylvania and I have a lot of cleaning to do partly because of Murray and his two friends. He’s exhausted. They apparently threw a party while we were away.

About a week ago I noticed what appeared to be a perfect nest in the empty lot behind our house. The only difference between this nest and a bird’s nest was its size. It’s bigger than an aboveground pool. It was constructed by a human being.

Of course I found the nest really amusing. I made mental notes how it changed from one day to the next. One day it’d be empty, the next it’d have a red blanket and the next day a bunch of empty vodka bottles and big black trash bag. I even wrote a song about the hobo nest and sang it to Emory. I showed Emory the nest and told him that as long as his father or I was alive he’d never find himself in that position.

The nest by itself was really quite funny. Even when the owner of the nest showed up late one night and began yelling, it was funny. At that point he was nothing more and an irate, drunken voice. We pictured one of Greenpoint’s many, many drunks. There are just so many of them living here. (Seriously, if you were to walk down Manhattan Avenue or through Mcgolrick Park on any given day, at any given hour, you’d see at least a dozen of these men and women. There are more of them living here than anywhere else I have ever been. And for the life of me I cannot figure out why. Greenpoint even puts Washington, DC to shame.)

Last Friday night he passed out and was rudely awoken by the jubilant sounds of the bachelorette party next door. He began screaming obscenities at the girls. They were skinny dipping in the aboveground pool out back. His ranting completely cancelled out the squeals coming from the women. Toby watched from our window and when he told me about it the following morning the both of us cracked up laughing. He said, “You have to be really down and out to tell a bunch of naked polish girls to keep it down so you can sleep in a nest of sticks.” And I found that statement brutally funny.

But then Monday morning came and I was finally able to put a face to the nest and all the drunken belligerence.

I watched him clean up the trash that lay around his nest. He deliberately picked up each and every piece of garbage and put every last morsel into a black trash bag.

I called Toby.

“The hobo is here.”

“Yeah. Have you checked your camera? I took some shots this morning while he was sleeping. I thought you might be interested to see who’s been living there.”

“Yeah, I am looking at him right now. He’s cleaning up. And it’s not all that funny anymore.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

We sat there in silence and I watched him pick up more trash from the parameter of his nest. He had done more for the environment in those five minutes than most New Yorkers do in an entire year.

“Is there someone I can call?”

“Not the cops. They won’t do anything. Even if they do show up, they’ll just throw him out.”

“How about 311?”

“You could try that.”

I hung up the phone and watched him finish cleaning. He put the trash in the bag and the cans and bottles in a small shopping bag. And then he walked toward the street and stopped a couple passing by. They were collectors – the folks who wheel carts around brooklyn and collect (steal?) recycling from our trash cans to make a couple of bucks. He handed the couple the recycling he had collected. And under different circumstances I would have found the exchange heartwarming.

Yesterday the guy had a friend over. And then proceeded to drink until the point of absolute oblivion. I have no idea where the alcohol came from or how they managed to buy it, but they had at least two bottles of booze. They were visibly drunk and screaming at one another. (The sound of stray, feral cats and drunk hobos has become my daily soundtrack.) When I told Tobyjoe about the friend and all the yelling he said, “Maybe someone got too close to his hobo eggs.” And I laughed.

But it wasn’t really funny.

Like the time we watched an alcoholic collapse in the street during a seizure, face down into a gutter at 9 AM on Bedford Avenue and a couple of people watching nervously chuckled.

That wasn’t particularly funny either.

And the time another local drunk decided that if his mother wouldn’t turn on the AC he’d cool off another way. He stole the keys to her minivan, got into the parked car, and passed out beneath the cool air. And when the van finally ran out of gas and the AC inevitably died, the drunk cooked himself to death. It was the hottest week of 2006. His mother thought he was on another drinking binge. But by the time she realized he was missing, the smell had already permeated the street. And as the story excitedly spread throughout the neighborhood and people covered their truly horrified smiles with their hands re-realizing that their very worst days were far better than his very best, well, that wasn’t really all that funny either.

I’m not going to get all PC and write about all the things I’d like to do in order to help this man and the countless others just like him. I’m not going to write about how much I care or how this sort of thing keeps me up at night. Because it really doesn’t anymore. I’m not going to write about how every day that I continue to live here my threshold for tolerating human suffering changes. I’m not going to talk about how numb I’ve become or how tired I am. And if there are any other New Yorkers reading this, perhaps you can relate. There’s not much that can be done for this man. Like myself, you’ve probably had delusions of grandeur before, maybe even made a call or two. It doesn’t take long to realize that our local law enforcement – even those whose job it is to help people like him – feel as hopeless as we do. Sure, you can give these people some cash for food and they’ll spend it on a bottle of vodka or a bag of crack. You can give them your leftovers from dinner and sometimes they throw it back at you because that’s not what they wanted. You can make a phone call and deal with a bunch of bureaucratic red tape and then no one comes out anyway. Eventually those bubbles of grandeur get popped. It may take months. It may take years, but eventually you stop making the call.

And for those of you reading this who live somewhere less urban, I probably seem pretty callous right about now, cruel even, heartless. I’m not going to try and convince you otherwise, even if I had the energy you probably wouldn’t believe me. It all sounds so damn trite when I hear it written in my head. I have read it on blogs a thousand times before – ways we’re going to change the world, point fingers at where everything went wrong and whodunit – and nothing changes. (Armchair politics? Isn’t that what it’s called? Guilty as charged.) It reads like pure regurgitated bullshit and I’m sick of regurgitating bullshit.

So, you won’t find any of that here. Not today. I’m not going to pretend. Instead, I’ll just tell it like it is, like it has been since the day I moved to Greenpoint.

We have a man living in our backyard. He’s built a nest out of sticks and bushes. He’s sick with alcohol (or lack thereof) and will most likely die sometime in the next couple of years. And if he’s lucky someone will notice he’s gone before he starts to smell. But if it’s the smell that leads someone to him, I do hope that they care more about the fact that a man is dead and less about how they’re going to deal with getting rid of the smell.

Nope. None of this particularly funny at all.

Emory is happiest whenever he’s being held. So I hold him a lot, which usually leaves me with only one free arm. I’ve spent a lot of time discovering things to do with one arm. There aren’t many. Reading a book isn’t easy to do with a newborn. (At least for me.) Cleaning is impossible. And knitting is so far out of the question, not that I got the hang of it yet anyway. Writing on the Internet is too frustrating because typing with one hand makes me feel crippled. Although, I do it sometimes. Usually, my texts look like an LOL cat wrote them.

“k. cnt type mch. 1 hand. b crful. c u soon. sry abt the wrk load. get sum wine.”

One day I received a response back from Toby. It read:

“I really have no clue what that could even mean.”

I usually bring Emory into the bedroom around 9:30 PM every night, which leaves me with all the evening programs the following morning. And so I’ve been watching a lot of television because it’s easy to do with one hand. (Please note, judgmental parents of the Internet, I read to him every day as well. I sing to him too. I don’t just sit around blogging, watching TV, and eating chocolate. Well, that last part is sort of true. Producing breast milk takes a whole lot of chocolate. But I digress.)

No matter how much planning goes into my couch camping organization skills, I still manage to forget one key item in order to survive. I’ll have Emory in one arm, a beverage at my feet, a pacifier on my right, the next bottle within reach, pillows propped up and ready to go for my sore back, maybe a snack or two, snacks that can be eaten with one hand. I’m ready to camp out for however long Emory wishes. But! Where’s the remote? The remote is out of arm’s reach. And I’m left thinking about one of my favorite books from childhood. I could probably learn a thing or two from this kid:

The other day was not unlike the rest. Only this time the remote was on the chair with Murray.

Of course, I had to put the baby down for a minute, leave my campsite, and take a picture.

Now, if only I could get him to work it for me.